Just calling to make sure you made it home last night. And to say thanks again for your help. I don’t know what Edwin would do without you. You’re the best friend a guy could have. I mean that. I’ll be home all day if you want to give me a call. Otherwise I’ll just see you tomorrow at the office. Hope you can stop by. But if you want to take a couple days off, go right ahead. Either way, no problem. I’ll talk to you later, Alex. So long for now!”

I didn’t feel like talking to Uttley just yet, or anyone else for that matter. I threw my coat on and headed out into the day. The sun was out, maybe for the last time before winter came. I walked down my access road and across the main road into the woods. It wasn’t a smart thing to do in the middle of deer season. The law requires you to wear bright orange if you hunt in the state of Michigan, but even if you aren’t hunting, you’d be a fool not to wear orange if you walk around in the woods. God knows there are enough half-drunken downstaters stumbling around in these woods, ready to shoot anything that moved. But I didn’t care. Not today.

I walked down the path to the lake, through the tamarack trees and the jack pine, and then north along the shoreline. There are no sand beaches on this stretch, nothing that easy and inviting. Instead there are rocks, more rocks than there are stars in the sky, pounded and washed by the waves ever since the glaciers left. There was a lot of debris on the rocks from the night’s winds, driftwood and a few pieces of what was once a small wooden boat. The water was fairly calm, but it had that November feel to it. It was ready to turn ugly at any time.

I must have walked north for an hour, past the last of the boat launches and up into the wild shore where there was no trace of human life. There were more birch trees up there, along with some balsam and black spruce. I was far enough from everything, I could let myself think about the night before. Okay, so somebody killed a bookmaker.